I do not want to use plex optimize as it will create duplicates. Just want the “source” to be the only thing I have.
I’m looking for settings in Xmedia Rencode or any other program that will do the following with my 1070 since it will speed up the process of 21TB:
I have the following devices:
iOS
BRIVA 4k TV
chromecast
roku 3
xbox one
ps4
plex for lg
plex web (chrome, safari)
I do not care what the file size is, copy quality from source, use AAC audio (since its 100% on all of those if im not mistaken), use mp4 container and extension? not sure if thats 100% compatible with all of those, and use gpu to do all this. Thoughts? Thanks!
If you don’t have 4K material, or if you really don’t care about re-encoding a 4K HEVC to a “less efficient” codec, h264 video is the most compatible codec through all these devices, just keep the level around 4.0 (maybe 4.1 will work good too). I suggest you build a sample with the encoding of your choice and test it on your devices. The only issue you could have is with subtitles, you should burn them in if you absolutely need them (like forced subs for foreign language etc).
This is by the way a topic that’s already been covered in the past with more detailed suggestions so have a look in the forum.
EDIT: Oh, and mkv container should be better than mp4, not sure about that
MKV => direct stream
MP4 => direct play
AVI => transcode
TS => direct stream
For others format, in general plex transcode
“Direct stream” => FFMPEG convert the container but keep the original video. (Not require a good CPU)
“Direct play” => Plex send the original file and the player do the rest.
@Maxou44 said:
In browser with “original quality”:
MKV => direct stream
MP4 => direct play
Correct, but direct stream is not CPU intensive and I tend to consider it equivalent to direct play since display quality is not affected.
AVI => transcode
This is probably because most AVIs contain an MPEG4 codec (like DivX or XVid) which is not supported by many modern players (like the Roku or Apple TV)
“Direct stream” => FFMPEG convert the container but keep the original video. (Not require a good CPU)
“Direct play” => Plex send the original file and the player do the rest.
That said, once your video is h264 and container is mkv or mp4 you’ll be able to direct play/direct stream almost everything as long as audio is supported. Of course transcoding audio is not very CPU intensive but to avoid this the only option is to find the format that fits all. I think AAC 2.0 should be able to direct play on almost anything
@Maxou44 said:
In browser with “original quality”:
MKV => direct stream
MP4 => direct play
Correct, but direct stream is not CPU intensive and I tend to consider it equivalent to direct play since display quality is not affected.
AVI => transcode
This is probably because most AVIs contain an MPEG4 codec (like DivX or XVid) which is not supported by many modern players (like the Roku or Apple TV)
“Direct stream” => FFMPEG convert the container but keep the original video. (Not require a good CPU)
“Direct play” => Plex send the original file and the player do the rest.
That said, once your video is h264 and container is mkv or mp4 you’ll be able to direct play/direct stream almost everything as long as audio is supported. Of course transcoding audio is not very CPU intensive but to avoid this the only option is to find the format that fits all. I think AAC 2.0 should be able to direct play on almost anything
Have you used Xmedia rencode by chance? I’m looking for the fastest way to do this. I did a test run last night with 33GB, did a copy from source, converted audio to AAC at 192Kbps (since the 192 was source) and ran it. Took 1 hour. I have 21TB of data… that would take 32 days roughly. I noticed it uses CPU power to do this and not GPU at all and I feel like there should be a faster way of doing this especially since the only thing being changed is the container format and audio.
best way you could do with the devices you have to be able to direct play on all of them…encode all videos on your plex server so all be compatible to all your plex client devices.
but if you want devices that could pull direct play on any videos you grab in the internet…be high bitrate encode or 4K videos. that device would be nvidia shield or weetek play 2. you could also try openpht on rpi3 but dont expect 4k videos or hevc to play smoothly but it can directly any videos you throw on it.
@jfrankiller3 said:
Have you used Xmedia rencode by chance? I’m looking for the fastest way to do this. I did a test run last night with 33GB, did a copy from source, converted audio to AAC at 192Kbps (since the 192 was source) and ran it. Took 1 hour. I have 21TB of data… that would take 32 days roughly.
Well is 33GB the size of a single movie? So it took one hour to convert the audio of a single movie? And actually can’t you let your PMS transcode the audio when needed?
@jfrankiller3 said:
Have you used Xmedia rencode by chance? I’m looking for the fastest way to do this. I did a test run last night with 33GB, did a copy from source, converted audio to AAC at 192Kbps (since the 192 was source) and ran it. Took 1 hour. I have 21TB of data… that would take 32 days roughly.
Well is 33GB the size of a single movie? So it took one hour to convert the audio of a single movie? And actually can’t you let your PMS transcode the audio when needed?
The idea is to have no transcoding. that 33GB was a old series if 124 files
@jfrankiller3 said:
Have you used Xmedia rencode by chance? I’m looking for the fastest way to do this. I did a test run last night with 33GB, did a copy from source, converted audio to AAC at 192Kbps (since the 192 was source) and ran it. Took 1 hour. I have 21TB of data… that would take 32 days roughly. I noticed it uses CPU power to do this and not GPU at all and I feel like there should be a faster way of doing this especially since the only thing being changed is the container format and audio.
Video encoding is one of the most demanding tasks for a computer.
If you want to reduce the time needed, something has to give:
bitrate (and thus file size) will increase if you tell the encoder to run ‘faster’, because it will then not try to encode in the most efficient way
quality will suffer if you tell the transcoder to maintain a lower quality
quality will suffer if you are using a hardware encoder (like the one in some GPU’s). How much the quality will be lower depends largely on the “age” of the GPU (with “age” I mean: how old is the design of the GPU). Hardware encoding does always “cut corners”, which makes the resulting quality inferior to a pure software encoding.
@jfrankiller3 said:
Have you used Xmedia rencode by chance? I’m looking for the fastest way to do this. I did a test run last night with 33GB, did a copy from source, converted audio to AAC at 192Kbps (since the 192 was source) and ran it. Took 1 hour. I have 21TB of data… that would take 32 days roughly. I noticed it uses CPU power to do this and not GPU at all and I feel like there should be a faster way of doing this especially since the only thing being changed is the container format and audio.
Video encoding is one of the most demanding tasks for a computer.
If you want to reduce the time needed, something has to give:
bitrate (and thus file size) will increase if you tell the encoder to run ‘faster’, because it will then not try to encode in the most efficient way
quality will suffer if you tell the transcoder to maintain a lower quality
quality will suffer if you are using a hardware encoder (like the one in some GPU’s). How much the quality will be lower depends largely on the “age” of the GPU (with “age” I mean: how old is the design of the GPU). Hardware encoding does always “cut corners”, which makes the resulting quality inferior to a pure software encoding.
@jfrankiller3 said:
my confusion is why if I’m just copying the video settings and only changing the container only use cpu?
I don’t understand what you are asking.
Do you mean, you only want to ‘remux’ instead of ‘transcode’ (e.g. from mkv to mp4)?
Some videos I have are .mkv’s but want them all to be 100% direct play (so I just assume mp4 container) and I do NOT want to modify the quality aka bitrate, b-frames etc. Just a normal copy over. I do want to convert (if it needs to be done) to AAC as well since that is 100% compatible aka no transcoding for all devices that I’ve listed and then some. If that is what remux is then perfect! But I need a way to speed up the process since I have 21TB of videos to do this to.
When you convert a video over from say x264 to x265 you can use your gpu to speed up the process since CPU would take to long. I’m wondering if what I need ^ can be done to speed up the process as well. If not oh well just figured it’d help.
the script in the link I posted above will do that.
They look at the file and if it is compatible they will simply remux it to mp4.
Read up on it a bit.
How long does it take your system to just “copy” all these 30GB of files? Because consider that if you have a slow drive you have to add all the time necessary to read and write the data to disk to the time needed for audio transcoding…
Was browsing and came across this post. Might want to have a look at Wondwrshare’s Uniconverter very good at re-encoding and fast if you use GPU acceleration. Maintains quality really good.
